Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Why I was so disappointed by Mary McAleese’s comments on gay priests (Opinion)

Homophobia has never gone away.

It’s everywhere,
not just in places such as India, where a law against gay sex exists
which carries prison sentences of up to 10 years.

What about actor Alec Baldwin,
an Obama and gay marriage supporter, who when provoked refers to people
as “toxic little queens” and other more vile and graphic homophobic
terms?

His MSNBC show, Up Late With Alec Baldwin,
was cancelled when his claims that he had no idea the expressions were
homophobic began to wear thin. (Mind you, his ratings were also
slipping.)

I’ve witnessed something similar myself in
pubs in Dublin.

People who would happily vote for gay marriage have said
crude, snide and offensive things about and to gay and lesbian people I
know.

For people who are genuinely homophobic,
gay people are the “Other”.

For a certain type of liberal, anyone who
supports traditional marriage is the Other.

In both cases, people fail
to understand or relate to the Other as people.

Erudite

That’s why I was so disappointed in Mary McAleese’s comments as reported in the Glasgow Herald.
McAleese is an erudite, intelligent woman and a committed Catholic.

It
is hard to believe that she really thinks the church’s teaching on
sexuality, and in particular, on gay sex, stems from the fact that there
are allegedly so many gay churchmen frantically trying to repress their
sexuality.

As someone with a qualification in canon law, she must know
the church teaches that sexuality is ordered towards a certain goal,
that of loving and mutual support that binds men and women together so
they can best care for their children.

She might
profoundly disagree with that teaching, as is her right, but why does
she believe the alleged fact that so many priests are gay constitutes a
“herd of elephants” in the room?

I am not aware of any research that
indicates real numbers, but even if 95 per cent of priests were gay,
does that mean they are all repressed, stifling their sexuality, and
self-hating homophobes as a result?

I know gay
priests who manage to like themselves as much as anyone likes
themselves, who radiate a hard-won and quiet contentment and who also
accept and live out the church’s teaching on gay sex.

Sinner

And
what of her reported remark that no one likes to be considered a
sinner, as though this were only directed at gay people?

When asked in a
recent interview who Jorge Bergoglio is, Pope Francis paused, and then said, “I am a sinner.”

In
the Christian understanding of what it is to be human, we are all
sinners, we all make unbelievable messes, and we are all unbelievably
loved.

The language used about gay sexual acts, such as
the phrase “intrinsic disorder”, is deeply unhelpful.

I instinctively
recoil from it but I also don’t believe it carries the hatred attributed
to it.

For example, the catechism also refers to lying and calumny as
intrinsically disordered.

I suspect that stuffing
yourself silly for the 12 days of Christmas is also considered
intrinsically disordered, and sex outside marriage is definitely
considered intrinsically disordered, but the church is never accused of
hating liars, greedy people or heterosexuals.

But to declare the church
homophobic is routine.

It is also assumed that
every gay person supports gay marriage, which is far from true either
among Christians or secular gay people.

There is an active discussion
among gay Christians.

They refer to themselves as Side A, gay Christians
who disagree with the church’s teaching, and Side B, those who agree.

Some of the gay people who agree with the
church’s teaching do not do so uncritically. For a flavour of Side B, go
to www.spiritualfriendship.org.

They may accept that sexual acts are
best confined to male-female marriage, but they think the church has
mountains to climb before it can credibly claim to care for gays and
lesbians.

Ignored

They
point out that if the only vocations you hear about are priesthood and
marriage, it is not particularly helpful to people who are struggling,
but really want to live celibately.

They often feel ignored, or feared.

However, they also present some really moving accounts of gay people who
have received support from their parishes and friends.

Wesley Hill, who is gay and celibate, in an article in First Things describes
being asked to be a godparent by two married couples, who then
incorporated him into their families in the way a close and much-loved
uncle might be.